October 17, 2011

Iceman stories begin arriving!

The National Geographic has info, a teaser for an October 26 Nova special:

The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk—somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed several genetic variants that placed the Iceman at high risk for hardening of the arteries. ("If he hadn't been shot," Zink remarked, "he probably would have died of a heart attack or stroke in ten years.") Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA—making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease.

It seems that my prediction that the Iceman will turn out to be Mediterranean in terms of his autosomal genetic components was right!

I don't get, however, how lactose intolerance is incompatible with being a shepherd, since milk is widely used in southern Europe both as a raw product and for its cheese. I lack the lactose tolerance gene myself, but that doesn't keep me from having a glass of milk nearly every day. Lactose tolerance makes it possible for people to drink lots of milk; lactose intolerance does not make it impossible for them to drink any, or to enjoy its secondary products (such as cheese and butter).

46 comments:

If you can drink a glass of raw milk daily without any effects, you are not lactose intolerant, regardless of your allele for the most common marker in Europe for this polimorphism. Not all is in just one gene.

Dienekes says: “It seems that my prediction that the Iceman will turn out to be Mediterranean in terms of his autosomal genetic components was right!”

“he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula”

This isn’t “Mediterranean” and less “Greek”: this is Italian, those Italians from Sardinia, Tuscany and Liguria who peopled like agriculturalists (cultural ones and not demic from Middle East) from 7500 YBP also Spain.

If there is someone whose hypotheses are winning is me, with all the respect and admiration I have always had for you.

And, please, let’s stop to consider Sicilians something else from Italians, because they maintain the Y and mt of the most ancient Italians.

Most cheeses, but not all, lose the lactose in the whey but sheep are productive for wool and of course meat. It's not as if he was running a herd of dairy cattle. I don't think it's too much of an oddity.

This isn’t “Mediterranean” and less “Greek”: this is Italian, those Italians from Sardinia, Tuscany and Liguria who peopled like agriculturalists (cultural ones and not demic from Middle East) from 7500 YBP also Spain.

We'll have to see the details. First of all, no one said anything about "Greek", so stop hallucinating. Second, Sardinia and Sicily are Mediterranean islands, and they are not part of the Italian peninsula. Third, it may suck for your Italian uber-refugium theory that a prehistoric North Italian has links to Sardinians, Sicilians, and Iberians, but apparently not Tuscans. I guess you'll have to modify your theories.

"...making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease."

"Surpise" (???) at MAYBE being lactose intolerant, since he is thought by many to have been a shepherd? And the "MOST suprise" (???) at an indicator for Lyme disease? Tell me some Fifth Ave. publicity Guru didn't write this tripe for NGS.

Gee, ticks in Europe, and on a "maybe" shepherd, what a discovery! Yes, indeed, best to wait and see what the real brains say. I think this may be a week of many ups and downs from Otzi's "handlers".

The connection is that they (meaning Iberian isolates, today) are less "tainted" by later migrations - first agriculturalists from Anatolia, cattle farming IE people from the north, seafarers from the Levant and Greece, and multi-culti introduced by Romans.

My prediction was that Ötzi may have some small (10% - 20% or so) northern European component, because of cattle-farmer expansion to higher altitudes during a number of generations before his time. If not, this means that the Alps, unlike pretty much any time thereafter*, where a strong barrier instead of a strong conduit with open trade routes.

(*We know this from recent finds alongside melting glacier passes: there are finds that connect the north and south for millennia).

“The connection is that they (meaning Iberian isolates, today) are less "tainted" by later migrations - first agriculturalists from Anatolia, cattle farming IE people from the north, seafarers from the Levant and Greece, and multi-culti introduced by Romans”.

Someone thinks to me like an Italocentric person.What should we think about “eurologist”?

1) “first agriculturalists” came from Anatolia (there are papers that demonstrate that they came from Italy 7500 YBP by sea, and that they were Italians become agriculturalists)2) “cattle farming IE people from the north”: others think from East. My positions is that IE is linked to Etruscan-Rhaetian-Camun and was formed in Central Europe, but they came out from the Italian refugium3) “seafarers from the Levant and Greece”: opposite fans counted twice or more those hg. T etc.4) Romans of course introduced only multicultural persons and not themselves….

The first population of Europe took place from the south east to north, following the melting of ice, this can not be discussed.You can discuss how the first Europeans arrived on the coast and where they lived periods of glaciation, but not on the direction of migration.The Alps have always been a major obstacle for communication between Italy and Northern Europe, but this does not mean that there were no trade across the Alps, but I think they were exercised by specialists, who crossed the Alps for very important reasons , as the metals trade . I think that Ötzi was one of these specialists.The invasions and migrations in Italy did not happen ever crossing the Alps, they all occurred on the east, from the Carnia regionm which offers much more easy steps (except for Hannibal, of course).About haplogroup G, I already wrote that I think it arrived in Italy from the Balkans, but in times so remote that it is impossible to connect it to Greeks, simply because it was long before someone tought the idea of the Hellenes.Finally, the southern Europeans have average hair and brown eyes, just a misunderstanding of the places can do believe otherwise.

Sardinia and geographically isolated parts of Iberia are probably light on the IE component. I'm a little surprised that Sicily is as well given its long history of dealings with the Rome.

Also, one thing we do know about Otzi is his era. He is a copper age fellow, post-early Neolithic, but also pre-Bronze Age. He is almost certainly pre-IE.

But, it isn't necessarily safe to infer that he is autosomally close kin to LBK farmers, for example. There were 2,500 years in which a population shift could have happened. And, I don't think that it is safe to infer that he does or does not have Anatolian origins, given the many distinct layers of population history that exist in Anatolia today that could obscure the genetics of copper age Anatolia.

His lack of the most common European lactose tolerance allele would suggest that he is not close kin to the Basque.

I suspect that they tested Ötzi for the Western European Lactase Persistent allele, but there are other ones too, like the one found in East African pastoralists. So being negative for one, doesn't mean you are negative for another.

If Otzi is like modern Sardinians, and modern Sardinians are like ancient Neolithic people and Otzi is at the border of Neolithic/Chalcolithic, then it makes sense to interpret these relationships as a Neolithic population stratum that has survived in Sardinia and was altered in the Alps (probably by Celtic peoples in the 1st millennium BC).

I wonder when they tell us that Otzi "is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula", are they talking about autosomal admixture or about Y-DNA ?

Lactose intolerance is mostly a problem if you are trying to live on raw milk, but milk doesn't stay raw and fresh for very long in any case without refrigeration. If you make cheese with some clotting agent - ricotta or cottage cheese, havarti and jack cheeses, etc - those cheeses wil retain most their lactose, but once lactobacillus or any of the other cheese bacteria get going that is going to change. And if you are consuming most of your milk as yoghurt or sour milk the problem doesn't arise in the first place.

And there are degrees of sensitivity. Some people can get by now and then with a glass of milk while other people get the cramps from eating butter on toast.

Milk consumption and cattle-raising are very socially marked in some places. In India - northern at least - it is a marker of Aryan-ness. In east Africa lactase-persistent poulations live right next door to populations who are not lactase-persistent and have for centuries, without those popultaions becoming lacatse-persistent. The same conditions may have applied in Europe for a period of centuries.

We are talking about autosomal composition, here. It does not matter that 15k and/or 12k ya many central/northern Europeans were closely related to southerners from Iberia and Italy, because a number of things happened thereafter. In the north, you had influx from the east, and a more pronounced shift from the Balkans and LBK than Cardium could achieve in the south. Agricultural explosion fixed a number of differences and idiosyncrasies locally all over Europe. And then came another 7,000 years of diffusion, with occasional small migrations. It is naive to think that current day northern Italians are autosomally identical to people there 5,000 years ago. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that isolate populations in southern Europe have "avoided" some of the gene flux, and thus are more closely related.

Of course, some northern Italians may still be 60%-80% or so similar to Ötzi.

Yes, if Oetzi's *autosomal* is Med to the same, almost total extent that Sardinia still is, then the implication would seem to be that there has been absolutely massive genetic replacement in central and western Europe since the end of the Neolithic. Sardinia -- and Oetzi -- represent one of several autosomal components in modern Europeans, who do not descend principally from Med Neolithics, let alone Cro-Magnon.

Presumably this alludes to IE R1b migration from the Near East during the Bronze Age, given the age and distribution of the R1b clades? The genetic structure of modern Europeans dates from the Bronze Age, with later Roman occupation and Celtic, Germanic and Slavic migrations within Europe. Cro-Magnon represents only a small and as yet undetermined fraction of European ancestry.

Yes, if Oetzi's *autosomal* is Med to the same, almost total extent that Sardinia still is, then the implication would seem to be that there has been absolutely massive genetic replacement in central and western Europe since the end of the Neolithic.

I completely disagree. We are talking 10% to 20% differences, here, for most of Europe.

Firstly, Europe is incredibly close to each other on a world-wide basis, to start with. For example, by any test or measure, Germany and Hungary score extremely close, even jointly with the surrounding Slavic countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia). Again, y-DNA and three different languages had almost zero impact on autosomal.

Secondly, as I stated above, it is silly to assume that there was no diffusion in 5,000 years. You don't need "massive migrations" if people can walk 20 miles and intermarry.

Thirdly, archeology tells us that nothing particular happened at the very, very long onset of the Chalcolithic bronze age in Europe. People largely stayed were they were. There simply were no migrations of any significant size or impact.

'he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East'Really? If he is mainly "mediterranean", than he IS related to Middle East and North African populations too.

Anyway, funny to see he lacks the european lactase tolerance gene while I have it (and I am Berber).

@ Eurologist, yes but I recall that the North European ancestral component seems to be closer to the West Asian (0.036) than to the Mediterranean (0.057) -- and also closer than the Mediterranean is to West Asian (0.062) -- in Dienekes' Admixture analysis. The componential analysis thus seems to suggest an origin of the Northern European ancestral component in Asia.

archeology tells us that nothing particular happened at the very, very long onset of the Chalcolithic bronze age in Europe

I am no expert in IE history but perhaps someone more knowledgeable could say something about the spread of the Kurgan (mound) burial culture across Europe at the onset of the Bronze Age and how it replaced the former, millennia-old burial culture. Burial items also reflected the IE transition, with religious, cultural and militaristic items typical of the steppes suddenly replacing the old Neolithic items in graves. Also the pottery suddenly changes to a steppe form after a rigidly stable form had totally dominated in Europe for thousands of years. And of course there is also the spread of steppe Bronze Age technology; wheels, swords, chariots -- which suggests the migration of a highly mobile and militarised people. The same is also suggested by how a militaristic steppe religion suddenly replaced a more peaceful Neolithic religion in Europe. Moreover, it is thought that the Black Sea Deluge may have occassioned the IE invasions.

So we have not only a complete change in language across nearly all of Europe -- but also a complete change in the economy, military, religion and in the burial and pottery culture of Europe at the onset of the Bronze Age.

That would seem to strongly suggest that the bearers of a militaristic IE culture largely replaced the bearers of an old agricultural culture in much of Europe. Hopefully we will soon see to what extent the genetic record supports that account.

"And of course there is also the spread of steppe Bronze Age technology; wheels, swords, chariots -- which suggests the migration of a highly mobile and militarised people."

This is as much support for an IE replacement in Egypt as in Europe.

"I am no expert in IE history but perhaps someone more knowledgeable could say something about the spread of the Kurgan (mound) burial culture across Europe at the onset of the Bronze Age and how it replaced the former..."

What spread of kurgans across Europe are you referring to? I don't recall seeing any in Germany anywhere, and I doubt that there are any in France or on Britain either.

"I recall that the North European ancestral component seems to be closer to the West Asian (0.036)"

That's a most keen observation. In fact in all that table only another pair falls so close to each other East and SE Asians (0.034), all the other pairs are at least x1.58 distant (North-South Euro: 0.057, there are a large number of pairs in the 0.06-0.07 range).

Not just that, the North Euro-West Asian pair is similarly close to the South Europe and Red Sea as they are (both) to Kalash and Indians.

All this is very curious, even if I have no idea of how exactly to interpret this. One possibility might be to argue that the North European component is largely 'Neolithic' (from West Asia), which also influenced genetically (but to lesser degree) other areas, including India.

I don't like the explanation too much but what those data say is that WA+NE are a relatively homogeneous cluster that are located equally related to other West Eurasians and to South Asians (while South Asians and other West Eurasians are not that akin to each other).

I recall that the North European ancestral component seems to be closer to the West Asian (0.036) than to the Mediterranean (0.057) -- and also closer than the Mediterranean is to West Asian (0.062) -- in Dienekes' Admixture analysis. The componential analysis thus seems to suggest an origin of the Northern European ancestral component in Asia

I always heard that the Indo-Europeans/Aryans came from Russia which, of course, stretches from Europe to Asia. This analysis would seem to back up this theory.

I wouldn't read too much into such small differences when the distances are likely dominated by the first 4 largest dimensions which have zero to do with Europe and West Asia (Amerind, Papuan, East Asian, and Subsaharan Africa). That is, on that scale, I would rather trust an analysis that only included components 1, 3, 5, 8, 11 and 12.

As to your other comments, archaeology doesn't support massive invasions, and I don't think y-DNA and mt-DNA do, either. With quantitative methods, IE is dated at ~5,000 years before the central European bronze age. Likewise, central European bronze age predates strict "Kurgan" burial practices by at least 600 years (while, conversely, more general Tumulus burials are known from long before the bronze age). This is a very slow transition, and not a homogeneous culture, at all, but one that from the outset inherits the pre-existing local differences. There are four major groups (and up to twelve smaller divisions) in Germany alone, surrounding the major river systems. The middle bronze age there is also very egalitarian, with almost no indications of any hierarchical structure - the opposite of what you would expect if invasions were going on.

Also, one should emphasize that the Fst distances are those of the components - not those of populations. That is, today most southern Europeans (except the Basque and Sardinians) have a by far larger western Asian component than Northern Europeans do (some of them have almost none).

Jim: "This is as much support for an IE replacement in Egypt as in Europe."

J, another line of argument would be that the archeology (and language, religion) suggests a mobile and militaristic people liable to invade, conquer and slaughter. That is not to say that the spread of their culture to a particular region always indicates that they conquered that region. Their migrational tendency would not exclude the imitation of their culture; perhaps their migrational success even promoted its imitation.

Jim: "What spread of kurgans across Europe are you referring to? I don't recall seeing any in Germany anywhere, and I doubt that there are any in France or on Britain either."

Maju: "I don't like the explanation too much but what those data say is that WA+NE are a relatively homogeneous cluster that are located equally related to other West Eurasians and to South Asians (while South Asians and other West Eurasians are not that akin to each other)."

Av Jo: "I always heard that the Indo-Europeans/Aryans came from Russia which, of course, stretches from Europe to Asia. This analysis would seem to back up this theory."

J, M and AJ, maybe the spread of Kurgan archeology and the closeness of the West Asian and North European ancestral components point to the expansions of R1a and R1b into Europe. Maciamo argues that while R1a and R1b have common roots in Asia, between the Black Sea and the Hindu Kush, they nevertheless formed separate populations, with R1a to the NE of R1b. R1a then expanded NW into eastern Europe and R1b NW into western Europe. See Maciamo here: http://eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml#R1b Perhaps R1b simply didnt use kurgans by the time it spread across western and central Europe?

Eurologist: "archaeology doesn't support massive invasions"

E, you may be right, I am no expert. However, the Kurgan theory (first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas) is still "the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins" afaik. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis

However, the Kurgan theory (first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas) is still "the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins"

That assessment is likely based on reviews and books that were written 10 - 30 or more years ago, not on current research. I really don't know anyone who currently is supportive of this. It simply does not match at all European time lines and European evolutions of cultures, and also does not match quantitative dating and relatedness of IE languages, by a long shot.

It seems more likely that IE has an Anatolian/Balkan origin ~8,000-9,000 ya, and few peoples had any significant impact on European genes after that (except that early Danubian haplotypes diminished in relation to local ones, and R1a asserted its already prevalent presence in the East).

"E, you may be right, I am no expert. However, the Kurgan theory (first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas) is still "the most widely accepted scenario of Indo-European origins" afaik. "

It may be widely accpeptred, but you don't specifiy who it is that is accepting it. it was wildly poboluar in the women's Studies set because they liked the scenario of a peaceful Mother-worhiping civiilzation overwhelmend by charriot-riding patriarchalist barabrians, maybe it gratified their bodice-ripper fantasies. The problem is it doesn't fit the archaeological timeline and it doens; explain the language situation very well. Forone thig, the kurgan culture is late enough to have benn Iranian-speaking, so that elaves you with a whole bunch of non-Iranian IE langauges to explain, and all their necessarily earlier differentiation.

"Their migrational tendency would not exclude the imitation of their culture; perhaps their migrational success even promoted its imitation."

This makes sense and there are modern examples of this. The wide-spread adoption of English is not all due to migratory expansion.

No, Eurologist: the assessment of the Kurgan model being the only one with clear archaeological (and, importantly, logical) support is still alive and kicking and looks like is going to be the case for the time to come.

Just because the theory was conceived some decades ago, it does not mean it is obsolete, that same that just because some crackpot pseudo-scholars with some wizzy-izzy ideas based on nothing have just published something a few weeks or years ago does not make it more solid.

The Kurgan model is the only one that explains everything and does it well. Even other models like Renfrew's unsustainable hypothesis on farmer Indoeuropeans, require Kurgans to be an actor (but fail to explain how Kurgans would become Indoeuropeanized).

And Jim: while Gimbutas may have gone a step too far in the sociological interpretation of the Kurgan invasions (she may still have some reason but in that aspect she was surely idealizing the farmer societies and, in a negative sense also, the pastoralist societies as well), this says absolutely nothing against the Kurgan model as such.

It's not a fashion: it's archaeologically solid like no other model is. If you know the archaeology you must admit to that, while most who oppose it are not into archaeology in fact.

... "it doesn't fit the archaeological timeline"...

Why not? The archaeological timeline is self-consistent and most linguistic models of IE fit with that archaeological timeline extremely well.

"Perhaps R1b simply didnt use kurgans by the time it spread across western and central Europe?"

They had their own style of kurgans, often referred to as barrows. I believe there is evidence of the "western" style in Portugal as early as 4000 BC. Don't recall the exact date of the earliest, but I believe it to be neolithic, and certainly pre-dating some of the alleged migrations put forth by kurganists.

I know we disagree on this, and one could write a book on it (and people have). So, here just a few points specifically for most of north/central Europe (west of the steppe/plains):

Firstly, re timelines for people, culture, and language (IE) from the East to reach the areas west of the plains:

If it is supposed to be Globular Amphora (GA), then (i) it is way too late given modern linguistic timings of the IE tree, and (ii) contradicts the fact that the area west of it a few hundred years later developed its own early and mid bronze age with documented trade and cultural exchange from the south (specifically over the Alps and with the Balkans/ Greece), not the east. Finally, GA has cultural continuity with the local Funnelbeaker (FB) offshoot of LBK, starts with megalithic graves and ends in "Hockergäber, no Tumuli - none of that is eastern. Associated cattle graves are a cultural continuity with FB, not of eastern origin, then, either.

It can't be Baden either, because besides the timing issue, that is associated with the northern Balkans and not the east, and they had a mix of regular burials and cremations. Also, Baden has cultural continuity with the local Lengyel offshoot of LBK.

If it is the bronze age, you have the problem that tumuli with the characteristic grave position don't occur until 600 years after the local early bronze age.

Secondly, the proposed "driving agents" and supposedly introduced cultural items are mostly flawed in this region:

- there are almost no warrior-chieftains graves; society was largely egalitarian (as before and after, even into the iron age, north of the Celts)

- horses could not be used effectively because of heavy forestation, heavy soil, and expensive/unavailable winter fodder. And indeed, north of the Danube horses were extremely rare until Roman times.

- chariots are equally useless and indeed were not used. The first usage of chariots is in south, in the celtic region, and not until the iron age.

- the early bronze age is local there, with local production and import of raw materials from the north and the south, not the east.

- there is local cultural continuity; very few things are adopted from the east (tumuli graves with characteristic position, but there are also cremations), most items are imported/adopted from the south, or are evolutions from local cultural continuity.

Basically, by the time you get to western Poland, there is almost nothing left of any sorts of Kurgan (or hybrid) cultural package. Most importantly, anything that could have been causal in forcing the adoption of a new language is lacking.

I was unable to post this to the new Dodecad entry but it is relevant to this thread. Perhaps Dienekes would be kind enough to copy it over to the other blog.

http://dodecad.blogspot.com/2011/10/eurasia7-calculator.html#comments

<< [Kalash] proportions are consistent with previous results, showing them to be a "West Asian" population (62.4%) with substantial "South Asian" admixture (37.1%), and near-complete absence of any other genetic components. >>

And yet the Kalash show strong traces of blondism of the hair and eyes. (Search google images for "Kalash".) Does this allude to an (partial?) Asian origin of Nordics?

And again we see that the West Asian ancestral component and the Atlantic_Baltic component are much closer to each other (0.028) than they are to the Southern [European?] (0.055/ 0.058). And they are nearly as close to the South Asian (0.06/ 0/065) as they are to the Southern. Moreover they have simimlar distances to all the other components -- while the other components do not have similar distances? The data thus seems to suggest a West Asian origin of the Atlantic_Baltic [North European?] component.

The present analysis thus seems consistent with an Asian origin of the Indo-Europeans.

Supposedly they are publishing the results soon. At AGBT 2012 the slides showed that Otzi is equally distant, all genes-wise, to Tuscans and the rest of W and N Europeans (except Finns who are more distant). "Unfortunately there aren't any whole exome data for Sardinians yet (or Basques for that matter)"

The low-pass (2-3+X genomes) Sardinian project which was a subject of another talk there is huge (6,000 individuals from 4 small towns, mostly with medical research in mind) but barely analyzed. I don't think that there were any meaningful comparisons with their dataset. The Sardinian data which Carlos Bustamante used were SNPs (best match genome-wise, and the Y hap was specific to Sardinia and Corsica). My notes don't say where this Sardinia SNP dataset came from, and it didn't sound like a new development. What seemed new was the conspicuous lack of closest similarity to 100- Genomes' Tuscans.

Sorry I should have read this entry *before* listening to his talk, but at least I found your blog because of it ;)

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